Dow, S&P manage 1% gains despite seeing a far more down days than up days in July (13 down, 8 up)

Dow up 9 of the last 10 months

S&P, Nasdaq Up 5 of the last 7 months

Bonus Musing: August has been the S&P 500’s worst month of the year over the past 20 years

The Word on the Street Tonight

Google Postpones Launch of Nexus Q Entertainment Device/WSJ – Amir Efrati: “Google Inc. is hitting some bumps on the road to becoming a hardware designer and manufacturer. The Web-search giant said Tuesday it will delay the launch of its Nexus Q music- and video-streaming device that it manufactured in the U.S. to "work on making it even better."

MGM Film Studio to Buy Out Investor Icahn/WSJ – Mike Spector & Michelle Kung: “The parent of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer reached a deal to pay investor Carl Icahn more than $590 million for all his shares in the film studio, as the company makes preparations to go public, said people familiar with the matter.”

EA, Take-Two show weak season for videogames/Marketwatch – Rex Crum: “Losses and declines in revenue highlighted what is typically the weakest business quarter of the year with the latest financial results from videogame publishers Electronic Arts Inc. and Take-Two Interactive Software Inc. EA suggested that during the quarter, its highly promoted online multi-player game “Star Wars: The Old Republic,” isn’t doing as well as hoped. … Take-Two also had a quarter that fell short of expectations, mostly due to weaker-than-expected sales of the company’s “Spec Ops: The Line” and “Max Payne 3” titles.”

Facebook shares hit new low, 43% below IPO price/USA TODAY – Matt Krantz: “Facebook's rocky relationship with investors hit a new low Tuesday as shares tumbled another 6% to $21.71 a share. Three trading sessions after the social networking giant reported earnings for the first time as a public company, concerns about growth and share valuation are far from over.”

With Expectations So Low, Economy Starts to Look Good/CNBC – Patti Domm: “After months of disappointing financial markets, U.S. economic data may actually start to look better than Wall Street expects. The first glimpse of that may be showing up in Citigroup’s economic surprise index, which has started to turn up and is watched by analysts as a sign of possible market turns.”

No Vacation From Tweeting/WSJ – Elizabeth Holmes: “On the eve of her trip to the Southwest, Eva Chen, beauty director at Teen Vogue, sent a tweet: "Huzzah! I'm officially on vacation!" Over the next five days, while driving through Arizona, she tweeted more than 120 times, checked-in more than a dozen times on Foursquare and posted more than 30 photos to Instagram. Upon seeing the Grand Canyon for the first time, she immediately took a picture to share with her more than 32,600 Twitter followers.”